The Job: Family Time

Well, welcome to fire engineering with today's video blog. I'm P.J. Norwin. I'll take a few minutes of your time today just to talk about something, an item in the fire service that we often neglect, that we often don't talk about, but yet, we would not be the people we are today without it. It's our family. Many fire officers, company officers, administrative officers, chief officers, and many firefighters who are looking or preparing for promotional, opportunities down the road, need to remember and need to consider their family in everything that they do. All too often, in our down time when we're not in work, we're still working. We don't have a normal eight to four job. For volunteer firefighters, there is no time clock, 24/7, 365 days a week. If your a careerfirefighters you may have scheduled shift times, but I clearly know that many of you watching this blog today, have scanners at home, monitor the radio. Subscribe to text messages for your department so you know when the, the, when the brothers and sisters are going to work. You read the blogs, you pay attention to what's going on 24 seven. So even if you're a careerfirefighter, I, I get it. I know. You're still working all the time. Administrative officers, company officers. There's many times that you're working outside of your normal scheduled shift. All to often, this comes, this interferes with our family. We'll put something off, we'll put some time away to, you know, to check an email, to answer a text, to take a phone call, all the many things that we do. To sit down in front of the computer at night, and put something together, when it's clearly not within your scheduled working hours. We've all been there. Many firefighters, many officers and the chief officers that we speak of today are unique. They do unique things to prevent that from interfering with their family life. Having a secondary, personal cell phone, if you have a department or city cell phone. So at a certain time of the day, your department or city cell phone goes off. Me, that's what I do. I have a personal cellphone. When I get home from work, there's a certain period in the evening that my city phone gets turned off. I won't answer emails, texts, phone calls. Obviously, unless it's an emergency, or a callback, or being the town safety also that I didn't respond, respond to, that's a different story. So, today I wanna know. I wanna know what you do. What'd you do to prevent this job from interfering with your family? The number one priority in all of our lives. What challenges is that? What challenge does that offer you? To make those changes to your daily schedule so it doesn't interfere with your family. Or tell me how this has interfered with your family. What have you done to interfere with your family, and what did it take for you to realize the mistake that you were missing. So let's hear it. I wanna see this blog live and active this week. I wanna know what's going on with you. And how you're trying to avoid this pitfall by allowing this job to interfere with your family. I'm PJ North, fire and engineering, today's video blog. Thanks for watching.